Despite what the critics of blogging and social media would say, much good goes on through blogging and other outlets. But we also give constant testimony to the truth of Proverbs 10:19. Our many words inevitably lead to sin and folly, giving evidence that we have not reached the maturity James said would mark those who controlled their tongues.

I have been blessed by words I have read on blogs and exchanged with social media. I have good friends whom I’d have never met if not for social media interaction. My theology has been sharpened. There are some excellent blogs out there that encourage and instruct. When I got into blogging, I was a pastor in Iowa isolation and had little idea what was going on in the great big Baptist and Christian worlds around me. Blogging has helped me understand God’s word and what is going on among God’s people.

But the sinfulness of my own flesh has been, as Solomon warned, unavoidable. I’ve tried to be a peaceful blogger, one who sought unity in the Body of Christ. One good friends called me a “moderate” – not in the Baptist sense (anyone who knows me knows I’m a CR supporter) but in the sense that I usually look for a middle road in most of our blustery blogging battles. Another blogger asked me, “Dave, has there ever been a fence you haven’t tried to straddle?” There has been, but I understand why he said it. Being an antinomist, I believe that all truths are held in balance with other truths and we need to maintain the balance.

But in spite of my desire for unity, I’ve been angry, held grudges, written sharp words that injured others. I’ve been petty, petulant, irritable, and at one time or another exhibited many of the “works of the flesh” from Galatians 5. I don’t know anyone who has been involved long in blogging who is proud of every word he has written. I am not. Once, recently, I went back and read some of my old blogposts and comments. I stand behind most of what I’ve written, though I wonder about the wisdom of some of my posts. But I would love to go and delete many of the comments I’ve made and interactions I’ve had with other folks.

When words are many, sin is unavoidable. Guilty as charged.

Dr. Rainer’s Wonderful Post

Thom Rainer, in an article published today, hit a home run! He examined the dangers of social media as used by ministers. What I want to say here is just a reflection on that post, called Seven Warnings for Church Leaders Who Use Social Media. Read it. Heed it. You need it!

In the last month or so, there have been several instances of pastors using social media in ways that are shameful, sinful and destructive. It seems we simply do not listen to wisdom. Dr. Rainer’s words are apt and needed to each of us as we blog, Tweet and interact in all forms of social media. Here are some of my reflections on the topic. Some are based on his post, others are my own.

1) Your words are PERMANENT!

Dr. Rainer makes this absolutely true point. I don’t understand how it works, but even if you delete a post, knowledgeable folks can still find it. Before you hit the publish button, take a moment and think about this. In 10 years, someone can find this. Mark Driscoll has recently been embarrassed (again) by words he said over a decade ago on an online forum, under a pseudonym. The forum has been deleted, but someone found the words and he is having to apologize all over again for his folly.

It is a request I get all the time. “Dave, can you delete my comments?” Someone responded with anger, in pique, under strong emotion and said something they wish they hadn’t. Maybe they learned new facts or maybe they just cooled down and wish they hadn’t popped off. Now, they want me to go back and hide the evidence of their comments. But it is there. It cannot be hidden. When you write it, you own it!

2) You will be MISUNDERSTOOD!

Count on it. There is no context, no perspective, no body language. You perhaps meant the words one way, but someone will take them another. You were joking, but the reader is serious.

A couple of years ago, Mike Leake (he’s gonna hate me for mentioning this) posted something here about how Tony and I were conspiring to hold him down and keep his blog from being on the blogroll that used to be the center of our site. Anyone who knew Mike and me knew it was a joke and got a good laugh from it. Unfortunately, a lot of people who read SBC Voices don’t really know me or Mike and a few folks got very offended. I was on the road to an Executive Board meeting in Des Moines and I got an urgent message to get on the site and calm things down. Well played, Leake!

The point is, if you write and comment, you will be misread and misunderstood. You need to be careful with what you say. And you need to be gracious when misunderstood.

Frankly, I am not good at that. When I write a post and someone starts criticizing it based on their misunderstanding (or often, I’m convinced, on their failure to even read the post) I get annoyed.

But I need to remember that when I write, I am responsible for my words. I have to write clearly, clarify if necessary and make sure people can understand what I said. Some people are just belligerent and willfully difficult. I can’t fix that. But I can work hard to make sure that I accurately and carefully say what I want to say.

3) Love covers a multitude of sins. Emoticons do not!

My aggravation with emoticons is fairly well known. I appreciate Dr. Rainer giving a warning about them as well. I grew to hate emoticons because I saw people use them as a way of avoiding responsibility for their words. People would say harsh, hateful, unkind things and then add an emoticon as if that made everything okay.

I understand that an emoticon can perhaps have some value in letting people know that you are kidding. Fine. But don’t use them to excuse yourself for saying harsh, hateful things.

4) People are checking on you!

When you apply for a job, your online presence now becomes a part of that. Think about it, sir. The next pulpit committee that is reviewing your resume may do a simple search and find those insults you left for another on your site. Leaders in your own church can find them.

I remember once, a long time ago, when I had a personal blog that almost no one read, that I made a statement about one of the better known names in the Baptist world. I said that some of his statements and beliefs scared me. I felt safe behind my anonymity. A few minutes later, a comment popped up on my site. “What is it about me that scares you, Dave?” Oops.

Realize that your words are not a private conversation. They are permanent and public, and someone may read them.

Rainer makes an important point that a lost world also reads Christian blogs at times. Our fighting is not evangelistically helpful, in general.

5) We need to speak the truth in LOVE.

I’ve been involved in blogging for nearly a decade, and the battle lines have changed. The causes of conflict change, but the vitriol seems to remain. The IMB policies/trustee actions. Baptist identity. Calvinism. Personal conflicts. Leadership in the SBC. There has been one conflict after the other, but I’ve notice a common template that these blog wars tend to follow.

Those on Side A determine that those on side B are sinful, unChristian, unholy, heretical people. Maybe they have good reason, maybe they don’t.

Those on Side B respond to say that it is those on Side A that are the offenders. “I’m rubber, you’re glue…”

Those on Side A and Side B both engage in angry, hateful rhetoric condemning the angry, hateful rhetoric on the other side, presenting themselves as innocent servants of God defending themselves against the evil being done against them. When challenged, they reference the fact that “they started it.”

Both sides justify their vitriol as expressions of godly anger, as exhibiting discernment, calling the other side to godly repentance or some other form of self-justification. I’ve seen some of the most hateful rhetoric described as loving – “confronting sin is an act of true love.”

We all balance the competing claims of truth and love in one way or another. Some lean a little to the “truth” side (at least, truth as we see it) and some lean a little to the “love” side. Right now, it is time to let the pendulum swing a little to the love side. We need to remember 1 Corinthians 13 and “always believe, always hope, always trust, always persevere.” We need to let go of pettiness, grudges, and all of the works of the flesh.

It is not a sign of weakness, of lack of conviction, or of being theologically wishy-washy to obey the biblical commands to honor one another and let love, joy and peace govern our hearts and our conversations. In fact, James says that the ability to control one’s tongue is a primary marker of spiritual maturity. It takes more spiritual strength to hold our tongues than to bluster!

It is time that we leave the blog wars behind. Enough is enough.

If you are only going to read one blog (other than SBC Voices, of course) then I would recommend it be Rainer’s. It is consistently good and helpful to church leaders. Today’s post was an especially helpful reminder of the dangers of blogging and other social media.

Dave,
I don’t hate you for mentioning “the incident”. I hate you for being a Yankees fan. Here comes an emoticon to let you know I’m joking. 🙂 Except I’m not sure if I hate you for being a Yankees fan while they are playing the Tigers this week. If you can promise they’ll eventually fold and not make the playoffs I’ll cheer for them this week against the demons from Detroit.

I’ll take it. I’m cheering for a Yankee sweep. I want KC to win the division and the Tigers to not even make the playoffs. So your precious Yankees can have the wild card as far as I’m concerned. (Unless of course the Royals don’t win the division–then I think they’ll need that second wild card).

Ahh! Dave, very good. An antinomist. I might call myself a paradoxicalist, or syntheticalist or a creative dissonantist, the main idea being that one must allow ideas that appear to be, on the surface at least, irreconciliable and even unexplainable and yet both true at the same time. This approach has been denies by some Reformed believers, but the realization that there are such things as therapeutic paradoxes and how God can come at us with very opposites, meaning thereby to do us good as in the case of Jonah, his message of unconditional judgment, and the poor people of Nineveh. We also have to reckon with the reality that the price of freedom might well involve wrangles and that folks in a wrangle can get all tangled up and say and do things they should not as was the case with Paul and Barnabas over John Mark. Those worthies were enraged (so contention in the original) which Paul says in I Cors.13 love does not become enraged (easily provoked, really not provoked at all), condemning himself. And yet we must strive to avoid getting in the flesh in our disagreements. No easy matter as you have indication which has also been my experience. One grows a little more patient as one grows older, but not much I hate to say. No one said this would be easy, especially our Lord. Even so, we shall win in the end. Read the last chapter, if you don’t believe me. And I do think we shall continue for a millennium, not of years but of gnerations. Yes, a thousand generations, anywhere from 20,000-900,000 years and populate quadrillions of planets. After all, why would the Lord say some about gathering His elect from one end of the (definite article in the original) heaven to the other. My, that should like a fire under some folks. The post-millennial Calvinists win the day by getting more souls saved and into Heaven than any other soteriology or eschatology. After all, there I go repeating myself again, the number of the redeemed is a number that no one can number (Rev.7:9).

August 4, 2014 10:14 pm

Thom Rainer

Dave –

Wow. I saw your comment on my post, and I was very grateful. Now I read this post by you. Thank you for your kind words. I am certainly not deserving of them, but I will take them! It helped balance a couple of other things that came my way today (no emoticon).

I like TR’s material as well, especially when he gets into statistics (SBC Megachurches, etc).

In a way I’m pleased with how blogging and social media is being viewed in our denomination. Not long ago, convention leaders criticized all blogging, as if it were a demon to be sent back to hell. Now that leaders have embraced it, we’re getting advice on how to and how not to use it.

Oddly, my most viewed blog article came from one of Thom Ranier’s pieces. In 2011 he wrote an article on church leadership being criticized and the context at the time was the arise of church and pastor specific blog critics. His first point, a strategic mistake as well as one unsupported by data, was that leadership critics might be lost. That happens to be the sharpest knife in the toolbox of spiritual abusers. Maybe he didn’t think about that. I certainly don’t consider him in that group. He was just trying to help pastors (including three megapastors that he knows and who were under fire around that time) and staff learn to endure critics.

So, I wrote a piece entitled, “”Criticize your pastor? You might be lost” with a link to Ranier’s article. When SBC leadership address pastor criticism by saying “first” that critics might be lost, then that’s worth exploring. So, I did. In that I said that what would be helpful would be an article on how a pastor and church should handle legitimate criticism. So far as I am aware, Ranier has yet to write a piece about how church leadership should respond to critics and, as he warned in the one Dave linked above, his words are permanent.

I realize that my example is not the backdrop for Dave’s well written piece on blogging. I agree with him. It is never right to be unkind. It is never proper to go after a minister’s family. You will be found out in time and it might cost you.

It is important to remember Murphy’s law of writing. “Anything that can be misunderstood will be misunderstood.” When I was a field leader for the IMB, I had to supervise far-flung missionaries, mainly using email. My dear wife often reminded me that email (and blog posts) do not convey tone of voice, facial expression, or posture. That fact should inspire all of us to carefully consider our words and how they might be perceived by others.

I remember from being a speech major that something less than 25% of our communication is actually verbal. The actual amount was argued by the experts.

But the point was the same: your words alone, typically, do not convey all of your message. Therefore, if you only have words, you have to be careful. And you have to consider that the other person does not see your non-verbal cues, and the message encoder/sender is responsible for developing the message in such a way that it comes through clearly.

In all, this is why I typically avoid too much seriousness on social media. It’s just not conducive to real debate/discussion and functions much better for simple stories, light moments, and link-sharing.

And I am also one who burned a bridge by bad usage of social media in the past, so I’ve failed at it. Probably the other reason that you’ll see me pontificate on my blog but not on my FB/Twitter feeds.